Parasite
by Bustahead
Summary: What started off as a speculation fic is more fitting as an "AU". Dante finds himself facing a new enemy, his greatest one yet. And with no way to defend against his own blood, how can he be asked to protect mankind against the new danger that awaits?
1. Dante

_**Okay, so I last night saw this trailer type thing for Devil May Cry 4 and that got me wanting to write again, so yay. And hey, this is all speculation anyway. The women don't get mentioned in this thing either, because hey, let's face it, I don't know whether they're going to be making a return. So I decided to write what my imagination told me too and here we are!**_

**_I know that the fandom is slowly but surely dying out, but I'm hoping that things will be getting better for us all when Devil May Cry 4 comes out. So one can say that I wrote this fic, mostly to celebrate that finally, all of us have some more information to play around with._**

**_Thank you, Capcom. And thank you in advance to everyone else. You guys make me happy. Whether you read the fic and walk away, or whether you give me a review, I'm very grateful for all the support that you guys have given me in the past._**

**_Read, review if you like._**

**_But most of all, Enjoy_**

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_From that day forth, my arm changed….and a voice echoed …power…Give me more power!_

A parasite. That was what this was. Nothing more than a parasite, and with most things, there were ways to get rid of them. This situation couldn't be all that different, could it? But how does one combat against a parasite that was born of your own flesh and blood?

He looked towards his appendage, a lump rising in his throat as he stared hopelessly at what his left arm had become. A claw, ugly, yet at the same time beautiful, sharp and deadly. He stared along the edges of those black, ridged claws, his blue eyes staring, horrified as he realized yet again that no, this wasn't just lying in his bloodstream anymore, that this _thing_ was actually taking form, overriding his natural appearance…

The muscles in his shoulder tensed slowly and he growled softly, more out of frustration than with strain, even though he would have been forgiven for that too; the thing was like a dead-weight, weighing him down, stopping him from running free. He watched as the horrendous black and red _thing_ moved. He reached out with his other hand to touch it, to feel it, to make sure it was real and was yet again stunned when he realized that no, this was not made up out of any part of his imagination.

It felt like normal, human flesh. And that did nothing but terrify him even more. It felt so normal, yet when he stared at it, he felt utterly disgusted, like he wanted to vomit or something. It felt like flesh but it was every bit as deadly as a tiger's claw. The shock of all that he was seeing was making him feel light-headed and sick, forcing him to sit down quickly.

What was happening to him? And what about his brother? Had he still been alive (even though Dante doubted that he was dead) would he be facing the same problems? What was causing this? Was it some sort of curse that some tyrannical figure had placed upon him? Or was it…was it something _worse_?

Could it be that the human blood of his mother had finally met with a clash with the genetic legacy of his father? There was no real way he could find out and he had no one he could really turn to as it was. It wasn't as if he could just get up and visit his doctor.

"Hey doc, so what do _you_ think has caused my arm to turn into a demonic one?"

Even though he knew it was there, he had no real concrete evidence.

He could see the claw-arm with the naked eye, it was true. But whenever he looked in the mirror, the claw-arm, like the parasitic vampire that he felt it was, could not be seen. Only an arm, normal and unharmed in any way remained for the eye to see. And he wouldn't dare try and find out whether anyone could see what his eyes could.

And that perhaps, was the greatest burden of all, knowing that this knowledge was reserved for him and him only.

Now he truly knew the meaning, of being alone.


	2. Nero

**Nero**

For one hell of a long time, Nero hadn't really had much of an interest in anything really. Studying had kept him occupied, true, but it had never really been an _interest_, it just been mandatory, and it was just something that had to be done. So he had gone ahead and he had done it. Then he was out of school and straight into University, where he had eventually earned a degree in archaeology, a subject that had intrigued him at first but then had soon lost its interest and had left him feeling bored and unfulfilled. Had he been perhaps a little more outspoken, he would have been able to express himself clearly to anyone who was willing to listen, would have been able to say that he couldn't get rid of the feeling that he was meant for better things, that he had some sort of greater purpose.

He had known that had he ever given voice to his true feelings, he would have been seen as nothing more than an arrogant boy, perhaps even a little rude and would have been mocked when he had his back turned. And even though Nero knew it shouldn't have mattered to him, it did, and the knowledge caused him a considerable degree of mental anguish. If nothing else, he felt that it was a blow to his pride.

After all, he wasn't ashamed of who he was.

Or to be more precise, _what_ he was.

He was at least part demon, he knew and he didn't care, treating the matter in the same way he seemed to treat everything else in his life. It was simply one of things that had to be dealt with and there really wasn't anything much he could do about it.

He'd taken steps to try and fit in of course after the fingertips of his hand had turned into a set of formidable claws, revealing his slowly wakening powers, always covering his hand with a thick leather glove, always trying to keep his temper under control because who knew what would happen if he let instinct get the better of him? His mother had shown him every kindness, even though he had frightened her. She was not to know that the handsome stranger she had met that night had been a demon and when she had seen her child's hand, only then had she realized. And she had tried to tolerate and understand his oddities despite the fact that really, she knew nothing.

Looking back, Nero knew that the cause of all his current anger was definitely linked back to his mother. She had _tolerated_ him, she had been _kind_. Yet she had never really accepted him as her own after that, which had often given him cause of various degrees of upset previously, when he had been younger.

Younger? Hell, he was still young now! At University at eighteen, a three-year course done and dusted, a highly qualified degree under his belt, and all of this had been achieved by the time he was twenty-one. In a way it was crazy, how much could be gained in such a short time.

A single year had passed since then and now he had found everything he was looking for. He had found a group of friends that had somehow been able to bring out the best in him, had been able to reach into his previously untapped potential and actually get him to use it in a productive way. His life couldn't really get much better than this and while in the company of his friends, he found that sometimes, he could even forget the bitterness he felt when he thought of the human-race.

They had taken him and he had willingly joined their organization, which went under the name of…well, they hadn't quite reached that far yet, his friend's deciding that after their first task they'd set themselves, they'd come up with a suitable name. And who had he been to disagree?

His thoughts were suddenly broken as he heard a voice call his name. He looked up and smiled lightly as a dark-haired man walked up to him. Man…yeah…right. All of them, they were mere boys trying to masquerade as adults. Again, he found himself beginning to drift into a more thoughtful frame of mind. He snapped himself out of it and tried to pay attention.

'Zack,' he said, by way of greeting, his voice low.

'Nick says I gotta train you.' No greeting, no nothing. Straight down to business, that was always the way it was with this guy. Nero raised a silver eye-brow in question.

'Train?'

'Figures we gotta toughen up. I mean, hey, the guy's chosen a pretty big mission for ourselves considering we're only just startin' up.'

Oh yes…Sparda's seal. They wanted to study it in closer detail. As for him…well…

He smiled and stood up.

'What are we waiting for then?'

It had been a while since he'd had some form of a work-out, he could do with the exercise. Though he knew that the demon within him would never really be satisfied with a work-out, it would never be satisfied with anything but ripping into warm flesh, spilling fresh blood.

His pale eyes darkened as he followed his friend.

He could only hope that somehow, Sparda's seal would change that…


	3. Dante II

**Dante**

Hours slowly melted into day, which in turn melted into night and soon, before Dante was even properly aware of what exactly was happening, two weeks had passed and his arm had shown no sign of turning back into what could be called a human hand. And worse things were beginning to happen now.

He could hear a voice sounding in his mind.

At first, there had been no real cause for concern, it had all started off with a mild headache, and really, by now that was nothing new. It was not a real problem, and Dante had merely decided to put the cause of it down to an excess of stress. But then it had started to build as the days had passed and by the end of the first week, it felt as if something, some little creature of some kind was running around inside his head, as if some beast had been hatched and was searching around desperately to find a way out of his head.

Often, the pain was so blinding that he could do nothing but stagger about in agony, completely blinded by his pain, unable to call out for some sort of help, unable to let anyone see how truly afraid he was.

Fear. He was half demon, sure, but he was also half-human, and like all humans he was just as capable of feeling fear or crying out in agony as he suffered. Then the pain would slowly fade away and he would be left shaking, a cold sweat covering his body as he tried to recover from the onslaught that the _thing_ had hurled against him. He knew he should have done something in the way of trying to fight it off but this was different; this was something that he could not see, this was something that he had no idea how to fight off.

And he was terrified.

He felt trapped, as though he had been locked in a cruel steel trap that he had no chance of escaping, a trap that would never let him go, that would only squeeze around him until the life was crushed out of his body.

How could he ask for help? How could anybody help him fight this thing when it lurked inside his body? How could they try and help him fight when he had no real clue how to fight it off for himself? Lady may have been adept at killing, sure, but at the end of the day she knew nothing about the health and workings, had no clue of the physiology of a demonic body. Trish too, may have also tried to help but her problem was the same as Lady's; the only difference was that it was her knowledge of _humans_ that was limited. And that Lucia chick? Well, she was so far away and even when she wasn't, what help could she be?

He'd only met her once before, a devil-slayer to a devil-slayer. She had commented vaguely about the fact that demons seemed to have started breeding more and more on her island, Vie du whatever the hell it was called. But he had given her his card nonetheless, told her to call if things got rough, if he could ever be of any help. She had at first politely declined but he had insisted, had said that his father would turn in his grave if she didn't take the card.

His eyes suddenly brightened and a brief hint of a smile hovered around his lips. Maybe she could be of some indirect service after all? Matier. The old woman had said that she had known his father and she had seemed somewhat wise and knowledgeable about both the races that resided within his one body. Perhaps she would know something? Any sort of action was better than sitting here and doing nothing, he decided, and it was better to travel to them; the woman was old and was no longer fit to take such journeys.

Still, the ticket fare would be worth it if he was somehow able to find out what exactly was the matter with him.

As if to punish him for his daring, as if to laugh and mock at his vain attempts to look at the situation from a logical stance, his vision became blurred and turned to black. He fell to the floor as pain robbed his magnificent body of all his strength, as he became as weak and as defenceless as a new-born.

The agony lifted, and with it, so did his head. He waited in silence as his vision slowly returned to him.

This latest attack had made up his mind.

He had no choice but to try something, anything.

And so it was that he slowly hauled himself up to his feet, managed to struggle his mutilated claw into a glove and trudged outside.

Enough time had been wasted, and again it was time to stand up and face a new foe.

Perhaps the most deadliest one yet.


	4. Nero II

**Nero II**

The training was complete, the locations had been confirmed and all seemed to be going well for the organization. Things were going splendidly for Nero as well; a new member had recently joined their little group. Her name? Katie. Beautiful because it was so simple, so filled with everything that he was lacking. Humanity, for one thing. Her name was uncomplicated, unlike the complexities his own life held for him.

This, as well as her beauty had drawn him closer and closer to her, a helpless moth hypnotized by glowing, inviting, dangerous flames.

Dangerous, the girl was dangerous. Not because she was a threat to him, oh no; the girl couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag with holes in it. No, she was dangerous because he was insanely attracted to her. He was falling for her, at least, he _thought_ he was falling for her; he couldn't ever be really sure when it came to matters of the heart and he had to be so much more cautious than others.

Lust and love were two easily confused elements and the bestial, demonic side to him was more partial to lust and to shed blood, to pillage, to rape whereas the other side, the more human side…well…just because he _had_ a human side, it didn't mean that it was automatically pure, that it was incapable of being fuelled by lust.

He wasn't a fool, he was young, yes, but he wasn't a fool and he had watched the people around him, had seen as they had lusted over others, had heard their tales of broken marriages, had been a distant spectator as guys fell in lust with girls, got tired and bored of them and then threw them away as if they were nothing more than toys made for their pleasure. It wasn't just the guys, girls did it too, he knew.

Human in general were just as controlled by lust as any other creature, but the effects of them losing control were less…graphic then if a demon were to take leave of his senses.

So it was that he had, in the past, kept his distance from the opposite gender, too afraid of what it would do to him, too scared to find out how it would make his heart and soul react, too worried about what that reaction would mean. And yet, despite all of this, he just could not seem to shake her out of his thoughts and as the days passed and as the final preparations were rapidly put in place, he was getting closer and closer to her, actually wanting to pluck up the courage to speak to this mysterious woman. His surprise therefore, was absolute when it turned out that she made the first move.

She had smiled at him sweetly, and with a nervousness, with sudden shy behaviour that was unbecoming of him, he smiled back. It was their first brief contact with each other and it had remained in his mind for a long time afterwards. Then, in typical boyish fashion, he managed to forget his fascination for half an hour as he focused his energies on training.

The next time they chanced to come into contact, they exchanged greetings, saying "hello" to each other as they passed through the corridor before continuing on their way. Nero could have kicked himself; this was all so high-school, and he had just attained a degree. He was an adult, not a mere schoolboy! And yet, he knew he couldn't even call himself a "boy". He'd never been one, he'd always been aware of the fearsome power that lurked within him and he had always tried to shield the children around him by barring himself off from any contact.

What a shame that now he was an adult, his barriers appeared to have somehow become weakened, tampered with by a desire to love and feel loved.

He knew better though, he knew the dangers.

Though surely, it couldn't hurt if he approached her as a friend?

Surely not.

And so it was that his fate was unknowingly sealed.


	5. Dante III

**Dante III**

Apparently, somewhere along the line, he had gotten his lines crossed and he had thought that the two women would have somehow been of use to him. But as he drove on towards the airport, he paused, frowning intensely and a voice of reason told him that he was grasping at straws that were not even there. A reasonable voice perhaps, even a logical one. Dante had never been one for planning, even on Mallet Island he had always burst in with guns blazing, taking everything as it came, always care-free, always so relaxed. A puppet had animated itself and had thrown a dagger at him while his back was turned. So what did he do? Return the favour of course! With his sword…

For some odd reason, that incident had remained with the devil hunter, had served as a lesson that perhaps he should have been more careful, and that in the future, he would act only after taking a moment to think cautiously about the consequences. A moment…well…a second. Still, he did think, even if it was for a split second of time, even if it did usually end with blood staining the floor.

In light of his usual behaviour, perhaps it would have been for the best had Dante taken this new logical voice of reason as some sort of a bad omen, a sign that maybe all was not right with him. And as soon as he had thought it, he pushed the niggling doubt to one side. What a stupid thing to say. _Nothing_ was right. His arm had become demonic, his hand was a monstrous weapon, already he had destroyed things in his home without even meaning to. It wasn't a good indication of his power, he knew, but he also knew that as a kid he had accidentally damaged things but after a brief phase he had slowly settled into gaining control.

Now it was happening again; he was losing control and he hated it.

He supposed that that was understandable; there'd be something seriously wrong with him if he decided that he quite enjoyed the sensation of losing all control of himself and his powers.

So it was that he had turned around on his bike and had driven back home, his heart sinking as he realized that he had lost his only plan. He had felt so much more in control of things when he had some sort of course of action in his mind but even that had been unexpectedly wrenched away from him, by his own _reason_, of all things! Beaten by his own mind, he never thought that he would become his own worst enemy. He felt at this point, that not even Mundus had been quite as bad as all that was happening to him right now.

On he drove through the night, rage, frustration, despair and bafflement washing over him in alternating waves of emotion. The street-lights flashed across his features momentarily, throwing them into sharp relief, revealing the mental exhaustion that lay hidden deep within him before he was plunged into darkness, only to be held up to the light once again for examination. The roads were wet and thunder rumbled ominously ahead. Usually he loved the rain, whether indoors or not, but this time, even this failed to calm him.

He had no plan, he had an aim, a goal, but he had no means of achieving it. What he needed now was a stroke of luck.

And as he pulled up outside his agency, his home, it was standing there waiting for him, in an unexpected form.


	6. Chapter 6

**Nero III**

The flight to Fortuna, Italy, could have been far better, but it also could have been a lot worse at the same time. Getting his weapons through customs had been a pain in the ass but through some miracle or another, the case was solved and he'd been allowed to pass, along with his weapons, his sword and his hand-gun. Nero had put this down mostly to good luck; in his life, apart from the problems his heritage and his own insecurities brought up, good things just somehow found a way to happen to him. This had been only one incident out of many in his life and somehow, no matter what happened, he usually found some measure of good out of whatever life threw at him.

As he thought before, the flight could have been a lot better but it could have been much worse. It was true that he hated flying, not because of any heights, but more because of the fact that he had to sit and do nothing for so long. Movies did not keep his interest for very long, especially not the romance films they seemed to want to play incessantly, trying to pass it off as in-flight "entertainment". Even with action films he could only watch half of the movie before he began to feel restless again; the adrenalin rush he got from watching said movies did nothing to help this feeling.

He'd forgotten to charge his iPod and he'd only been able to get three hours of music out of it before the battery had ran down completely. Similarly with his Nintendo DS, even _that_ had failed him during his time of need. Still, he'd been happy to note that he'd wasted some time at least. There was nothing left for it apart from to try and sleep for the rest of the flight.

He knew now, that there was really no point in attempting such a thing. It was a useless endeavour; the seats were too uncomfortable, the noise of the plane's engine was altogether far too loud and there was a child behind him who thought it a great joke to kick the seat more or less constantly. He might have been able to ignore all that if the person sitting in front of him hadn't chosen to see how far his seat could recline and had then decided to keep it there for the rest of the trip.

Crushed knees had never helped a single soul go to sleep, and apparently half-demons weren't immune to these sort of effects.

Then Nick decided that since he had a bad stomach (aeroplane food just refused to agree with him), it would be better to swap seats so then he was sitting in the aisle. Nero watched all this with no great amount of interest, until he realized who exactly had come to sit by him.

Katie.

He said nothing for about half an hour, just looking through the window, part of him wanting to stay, the other part wanting to leap out into the blue world yonder.

'Interesting view, isn't it?' said a voice. And even though Nero _knew_ who it was, his mind took an unsuitable amount of time to register it. He turned his head to look at her and instead of replying, he merely stared dumbly. Katie watched him before smiling benignly. 'All that cloud.'

'Mm…' Nero said, a half-hearted attempt at conversation. Katie grinned.

'Surely you can say more than _that_? We've got another three hours and I've wanted to talk to you for a long time,' she said, in her sweet soft voice.

'Um…'

'It's just that the chance never came before because everyone was so busy doing all kinds of things,' she continued, her eyes wide, excitement only too obvious in her voice. She seemed breathless and Nero couldn't even begin to hazard a guess as to why.

He looked out of the window and then back at the young woman, back to the clouds and again at the silken brown hair. He gave an inward sigh and decided to give himself up.

'Your name is Katie, isn't it?'

_---_

_Bustahead says: Or is it? Trinity, Katie, Kayleigh? Could be one of them or none of them. Bah. Thanks for reading!_


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